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The
Soviet Civil War took place in the waning months of WWII in Europe. In the wake of Joseph Stalin's sudden death in February, leadership had passed to a troika consisting of Levrentiy Beria, Andrei Zhadnov and Vyacheslav Molotov. While initially successful at minimizing disruption after Stalin's demise, cracks began to show after the failure of the Red Army to cross the Oder River in force during
Operation Thunderclap in early March 1945. While open fighting did not begin until the arrest of Marshals Zhukov and Konev in early May, most agree that conflict became inevitable after the arrests of Zhadnov and Molotov in late March.
Beria, eager to divert blame for the failure of Thunderclap despite having forced its implementation over the recommendations of the military, began positioning to take full control of the Soviet leadership apparatus. He began slowly at first, targeting low-level associates of his Politburo colleagues in regional party organizations across the country. Having successfully isolated Zhadnov et al from sources of possible support, Beria began targeting more prominent figures in the Supreme Soviet and army commissars without firm loyalty to him. Beria's efforts culminated in the March 29th arrest of Zhadnov and Molotov on a series of charges, ranging from outright fabrications of collaboration with the Germans and other foreign powers as well as exposing their involvement in the various purges from Stalin's last decade in power. Zhadnov was executed almost immediately, while Molotov was kept in a form of house arrest, free only to consult with the Western Allies in an attempt to conceal what essentially was a palace coup by Beria.
Once it became clear that most of Stalin's Politburo was gone and that Beria was ruling alone, Zhukov was reported to be in a state of quiet rage. The failure of Thunderclap meant that the war would not end quickly and some of his best units had suffered heavy losses. The Germans had gained some breathing room in the East for the first time in over a year and there were reports that Steiner was using the pause to pull as many forces as possible back into Inner Germany for a final stand. Zhukov also knew that eventually he and other prominent commanders would become targets of Beria once the war was over, but felt his first duty was to ensure the defeat of Hitler.
To that end, Zhukov, as he had done so often throughout the course of the war, set out a bold plan of action. Beria had reduced the amount of contact and information sharing with the Western Allies to almost nothing after March 29, now only consisting of infrequent, heavily guarded meetings between Molotov and Ambassadors Kerr and Harriman at the Foreign Ministry. At Beria's direction, Molotov had continually refuted any of the preliminary agreements from Stalin at the Crimean Conference concerning the post-war occupation of Germany and joining the war against the Japanese, saying that no formal discussions would be entertained until the end of fighting in Europe. After the long-awaited linkup between Soviet and American troops at the Elbe river on April 29th, Zhukov requested a secret meeting with Eisenhower to. In a spirited discussion that lasted long into the early morning hours of May 2nd, the two commanders came to an agreement on a joint advance on Berlin. Now that the capital was basically surrounded, the plan was to slowly tighten the ring by burying the German defenders in artillery and air attacks, in particular the deployment of British and American heavy bombers in reducing enemy strongpoints to rubble. This would reduce the need for clear the city block by block and keep infantry casualties as low as possible. Eisenhower, at the urging of both Churchill and Vice President Truman (FDR's coma was not yet public knowledge), were desperate to get a clear sense of what the leadership situation would be under Beria. Zhukov was reported to have said that while there had been much suffering under Stalin, he feared that it would be worse under Beria. The two generals then parted ways, promising to speak again the next day to iron out the remaining details.
Almost immediately upon returning to his HQ near Guben, Zhukov was met by one of Beria's top henchmen, Boris Merkulov, and placed under arrest. Information about the Zhukov-Eisenhower meeting had been passed along by several members of the Cambridge Five and confirmed after several members of Zhukov's staff broke under questioning. Merkulov informed Zhukov that Konev had already been executed and that he was going to be transported to Moscow for Beria to deal with him personally. Ironically for Zhukov, his salvation would come at the hands of the SS. As the NKVD train taking Zhukov and other alleged conspirators was passing through the rail junction at Gorzów, a time bomb placed on the tracks by one of Skorzeny's 'stay behind' units went off. The train derailed, killing many aboard, but Zhukov was largely unharmed. The 39th Guards Motor Rifle Division, a veteran unit of Chuikov's 8th Guards Army, was resting and refitting at Gorzów in preparation for the final push on Berlin. As soldiers from the 39th came to secure the crash site, one of the few surviving NKVD officers attempted to secure their assistance in detaining Zhukov until alternative transport could be arranged by threatening their own arrests if they did not comply. The soldiers, many of who were veterans of Stalingrad and with whom Zhukov was immensely popular, refused. The NKVD men and several divisional were detained or shot out of hand attempting to intervene. When Chuikov arrived later in the day to meet with Zhukov, Zhukov first attempted to convince him to turn him back over to the NKVD in the hopes of preventing any future retaliation against Chuikov or his men. Chuikov convinced him that the only way to safeguard the future of the Army and
Rodina was to deal with the Beria and the NKVD once and for all. Zhukov, at first taken aback at the thought of being a traitor, eventually agreed.
As Zhukov's arrest had not been widely publicized or a replacement commander named by Beria, he was able to quickly reestablish his chain of command. Orders were dispatched, almost entirely in person, to trusted commanders to pull individual units off the front-line and to reposition them against NKVD units behind the front lines. These units were used more for keeping operational security behind the main lines and were lightly armed and would be no match for the heavy front line units. But before any move could be made against the NKVD, Zhukov knew that he needed to secure the involvement of Alexander Novikov, chief of the Soviet Air Force. Novikov, at first reluctant (as many were during the initial stages due to the fear of retaliation on their families), came to realize that no matter the outcome of Zhukov's efforts, Beria would likely proceed with another purge of the senior command leadership to rival '37-'38 and pledged the support of the VVS. The first outbreak of full scale fighting would begin on the 7th, as NKVD units facing the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts were attacked en masse on the ground and in the air. In response, Beria attempted to order Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian and Yeryomenko's 4th Ukrainian Fronts (who had remained neutral and were still engaging the Germans) to attack Zhukov. Both generals refused, although Yeryomenko's was seriously wounded by the commissar who attempted to remove him from command. By the 11th, NKVD authority no longer existed past the Bug River.
Beria, shocked at the speed at which Zhukov's rebellion had spread, then resolved to trade space for time. He knew that Zhukov could not move substantial forces east back into the Soviet Union while Germany had not yet surrendered, and decided that the best course of action would be to shut down the flow of domestic and Lend-Lease supplies to the front. The revolt, robbed of the massive supplies needed to maintain an army of several million men across thousands of miles of front, would wither in a manner of days. To accomplish this, Beria foolishly decided to shutter almost the entire war economy, furloughing millions of workers. This backfired massively, as angry confrontations between factory workers and NKVD units quickly turned violent, leading to pitched battles breaking out across the country. Local partisan units, including those experienced not only against the Nazis but also anti-Soviet groups in Ukraine and the Baltics, made common cause with rioting workers and local army units who had gone over to Zhukov to fight Beria's forces. By the end of May, Beria was only in effective control of pockets around several cities in European Russia and parts of the Causcaus. In his efforts to consolidate power, Beria's purge of the existing bureaucracy was so complete that once the revolt began, he could not longer depend on the infrastructure of terror built up under Stalin's reign to maintain control. On the evening of June 3rd, the remaining NKVD forces in Moscow, having been promised good treatment, stood down and allowed the city to be captured and Beria to be taken into custody. After a quick military tribunal on the grounds of the Kremlin, Beria was executed in the early morning hours of June 4th, ending the Soviet Civil War. Zhukov's war council, including Novikov, Rokossovsky, Tolbukhin and others, moved quickly to bring in civilian leadership so they could go on to finish the war against Germany. Desiring someone not strongly identified with either Stalin or Beria, it was decided that the role of General Secretary should be offered to Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States. Gromyko, although just 35 years old, had served ably as ambassador to Washington since 1943 and whose contributions to the various Allied conferences throughout the war made him well regarded in both London and Washington.
Next: On to Berlin
